Tender for construction of Spanish waste store

Friday, 5 September 2014

Spain's decommissioning firm Enresa has launched a tender for the contract to carry out the main civil construction works at the planned national high-level waste storage facility in central Spain.

How the Villar de Cañasfacility could look (Image: Enresa)

Enresa said that the purpose of the tender is the procurement of the main civil works for the main nuclear facilities and some auxiliary buildings located both within and outside of the so-called 'protected area'. The scope of the work to be carried out under the contract includes construction of the used fuel and waste reception building, processing buildings, phases 1 and 2 of the storage modules, a storage container warehouse and a waste container maintenance workshop. It also includes the construction of used fuel and radioactive material laboratory, radioactive waste treatment facility and other ancillary buildings.

The maximum value of the contract will be €218 million ($283 million), Enresa said, adding that interested companies have until 27 October to submit bids. The contract is expected to be awarded on 1 February 2015.

Work on the centralized temporary storage facility will begin once a municipal building permit has been obtained, as well as a construction licence from the ministry of industry, energy and tourism. Construction of all the main civil works is expected to take 58 months to complete.

The small town of Villar de Cañas in central Cuenca province was officially selected as the location of the storage facility in December 2011. Thirteen other localities had also declared individual interest at the end of 2009 in hosting the facility.

The facility at Villar de Cañas will accept transport casks of used nuclear fuel assemblies or vitrified wastes that are currently stored at each of Spain's nuclear power plants. These items will be removed and placed in smaller containers for placement in a dry store cooled by the passive circulation of air. The facility will provide storage for some 12,816 cubic metres of waste for 60 years, by which time a repository for permanent disposal should be available. The Spanish facility is modelled on the successful HABOG plant that fulfils the same role in the Netherlands.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News